Chapter 214: The Grand Full Bloom!

The next instant.

Only one spotlight remained lit on the stage.

All the audience.

All the past and present magical girls.

The King of the Sacred Tree, Su Jingyan, and Su Fang’s mother, Mogong Ma.

Everyone in the whole world, their gazes carried by that towering beam of light, focused on the red-haired girl at the very center.

And so…

All the Sparkle Values flowed, through that enormous live venue, poured entirely into her body.

As the performance reached its climax, the triumphant melody reverberating across the world, the rainbow-colored bar above the girl’s head began to surge wildly, rising exponentially.

In just a few seconds it hit one hundred percent!

Yet the rainbow radiance within showed no sign of stopping; it kept compressing and accumulating within that finite frame.

The rainbow brilliance, formed from countless prayers, shone ever brighter, and the long bar began to tremble violently.

As if it were about to buckle under the weight.

Tang Keren’s encouraging voice sounded like offstage commentary.

“That’s it! Just like that! Everyone, give a little more! A little~ more~ effort~”

“Ah, right!”

She suddenly covered her small mouth in surprise and looked up.

“The sky… is a stage too!!”

The Sacred Tree’s crown had already been thoroughly eroded, its leaves withered, yet something in the sky still stubbornly continued to shine.

—Those were Fragments of Hope, rotating like stars.

At this moment, those stars, as if awakened, turned their attention and cast something like a gaze.

A crisp cracking sound finally rang out above the crimson magical girl’s head.

The rainbow-like splendor instantly burst through its previous border, pouring out and drowning the figure of the girl below.

Countless prayers, countless hopes, wrapped around her, swallowed her, forming a massive, multicolored cocoon.

At the center of the cocoon.

Lin Guang slowly raised his left hand and gripped the Soul Gem at his chest with force.

And at this moment…

The tiny fragment inside that gem, like a grain of sand, still seemed one final step away from being fully ignited.

Lin Guang slowly closed his eyes, letting the surging emotions wash over him.

—Had the past Mengmengxiang really not found a Fragment of Hope?

Until now, everyone present had thought so, including those who knew her best—Tang Keren and Zihan—and even Amber, who understood the truth of the cycles.

Compared to the current Mengmengxiang, her past self had indeed been far too weak.

She was fragile, feared pain, and was naive to the point of impracticality, just like an ordinary girl you could meet anywhere.

In those cycles when she was still “alive,” every time she mustered the courage to go to the Outer Realm, her best results were at most killing a few low-tier dangerous species in the mist forest at the barrier’s edge.

That mist forest, adjacent to the Sacred Tree Barrier, had been combed through countless times like a comb by generations of magical girls across the long three thousand plus cycles.

In a place already thoroughly stripped bare, it was almost impossible for an unclaimed Fragment of Hope to still exist.

Someone as weak and talentless as her simply did not seem likely to find even the tiniest Fragment of Hope in that brutal Outer Realm.

But…

What if she actually did it?

The girl named Mengmengxiang truly had painfully ordinary talent for magic; the initial magic power allocated by the Sacred Tree was almost her ceiling.

Yet precisely because her magic ceiling was so low, her conviction was purer than that of the vast majority of people, even more so than most magical girls.

Therefore she had a far greater chance of achieving Full Bloom than others.

Time and again she summoned courage that seemed futile, time and again she staggered out on missions, and across more than seventy cycles, time and again she dragged her battered body through the mist forest on searches that seemed utterly meaningless.

Until finally.

At the very end, Mengmengxiang accomplished that impossible miracle.

She reached Full Bloom.

And in that final, soul-burning splendor, she actually found a Fragment of Hope in an inconspicuous corner.

That fragment was not special; like other ordinary Fragments of Hope, it would not respawn in the Outer Realm when the world reset.

If anything, it was somewhat peculiar only in its size.

It was smaller than all the other Fragments of Hope.

So insignificant that it seemed trivial, just like Mengmengxiang’s own existence. It was so small that even the Prophecy Maiden Su Fang, who possessed the strongest perception and was usually right beside her, could not notice it—only a natural feeling of closeness. Even the Sacred Tree could not tell whether it had returned.

But it was big enough.

Because it was a miracle itself.

The Soul Gem’s origin was a Domain-level thing of such greatness that nothing outside its true owner should have been able to fully temper it. That was an immutable law.

Yet this fragment was weak enough that Mengmengxiang’s Full Bloom broke that rule.

Full Bloom, in this world, is a rehearsal for True Transformation, an attempt to condense the elements of True Transformation.

So—

This fragment representing the world’s Domain bore the traces left by the girl’s soul, burned and broken, and became linked to her, never to be separated again.

Although it was still far from complete tempering, at least… an incredible first step had been taken.

And at the end of all things, she likewise met her successor, another version of herself—braver, brighter, stronger, yet equally resolute.

After passing the baton, that brave self crossed hardships and obstacles, finally arriving here, at this crucial moment.

Everything seemed to connect.

Every little bit up to now, countless seemingly meaningless acts converged and at last became the lever to pry fate’s gears, to seize the impossible possibility.

The red-haired girl inside the cocoon felt the scorching warmth coming from the Soul Gem at her chest.

It was the faint but steadfast power passed across endless time and space from her past self.

Even now, the body of Mengmengxiang, which had already burned out once, could not achieve Full Bloom again on its own.

But if she borrowed the power of others, the impossible could become possible.

She whispered the lines born of heart and memory: “Collected prayers will become a newborn shining star.”

“Become the path of light that shines!”

Amid countless shouts and choruses, her will and strength transformed within the melody, and the fragment in the Soul Gem erupted into a blinding light with the swelling rhythm.

On the fragment, at last, a dazzling crimson flame was kindled.

It was the flame that represented a miracle.

On the system panel, a new ability silently appeared.

[Domain of Pride (A) (0.1%)]

Then—

The spirit outfit on the girl began to melt, preparing to give birth to a brand-new form.

She raised her right hand and gripped her staff, which was also turning to light and beginning to reshape into a new form, as if to smash through the heavy cocoon.

“Full Bloom!!!”